HN, do you think ads in iOS is a good business move? On the one hand, there is so much money to be made. On the other, this is a short term gain that cheapens the brand.
Adding a PiHole and opting out of tracking and cookies wherever possible improved my online experience considerably. Also, paying for services like Kagi (kagi.com, I am not affiliated), that work on a subscription basis to provide their functionality, was a relief.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7WVt63S49s
"We have 185,000 apps on the App Store, created by tremendous developers. A lot of those apps are free, and a lo... the rest of them are really reasonably priced. We've got apps for free, for 99c, for $1.99, and we like that! Users like that! But these developers have to find a way to make some money. And we'd like to help them. Now, what some of the developers are starting to do is to put advertising into their apps. And, for lack of a more elegant way to say it, we think most of this mobile advertising really sucks. We thought we might be able to make some contributions. So that's what this is all about, it's all about helping our developers make some money through advertising so they can keep their free apps free."
... "The average iPhone user spends a little over 30 minutes every day using apps. Over 30 minutes every day, using apps on their phone. Now, if we said we want to put an ad up every 3 minutes, that would be 10 ads per device per day. 10 ads within 30 minutes, it's about the same as a television show. We're going to soon have 100,000,000 devices. That's 1 Billion ad opportunities per day in the iPhone community!"
Which gives competitors like Huawei an obvious, and valuable, differentiator. They can just sell ad-free phones to gain market share.
There was never a strong principle against advertising, despite the naivety from many devotees. Apple just wants to be the one to make the advertising dollars, rather than the app developers.
Privacy from thee but not from me!
Apple pivoted to selling "privacy as a service". Nobody is thinking Apple does it for some altruistic motive.
Apple consumers are willing to pay more for this "privacy" feature. But now they will question this if Apple starts selling ads.
And this also shows a different kind of “greenwashing” where one can launder abandonment of principles bc of fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. Eg, one could maximize profits by trading with S. Africa during apartheid, and shareholder theory would even require it. Not ideal imo!
so what? why are we as a society slaves to the advertisers, or to the money they offer? what else will we do for money? first we sell our user's attention when they look at an ad. then we sell their information so you can craft ads to grab more of their attention. then, once they've bought a product, we use that product to serve more ads to them so that we get more of their attention so our ads are more effective... when does it end?
advertisements are exhausting and degrade the quality of life of everyone who views them. if you work for a company that derives its income from ads then you are part of the problem, and you can quit anytime, but you won't, will you? because of money. beautiful advertising money. oh there is so much of it. and there are homes with blank walls which do not serve advertisements and I'm going to found a company to address this gap; it's insane that people can simply choose to avoid advertising when they want to. those people are an untapped market of opportunities...
please everyone just stop with the advertising. holy shit just stop.
and if you work for an advertising company, climb out of the sewer and join a company that makes lives better in literally any way that is not advertising, because ads do not improve quality of life for anyone that is not an advertiser.
It may be profitable for years, but it'll also kill the product over the long term.
UX matters there too and so hopefully it's done well.
The other problem is that "good" ads almost inevitably devolve towards "bad" ads as there is always incremental profit to be made from making your ads more intrusive while the cost to the brand/product is hard to quantify until one day a competitor comes along and eats your lunch.
Edit: One thing that became clear to me recently is that relevant ads do not maximize profitability. A market where ads are less relevant has more ad placement inventory because high-margin "irrelevant" advertising can be placed in front of more people.
For example, I've never expressed an interest in gambling, poker, or casinos. But those businesses have more money to advertise so I see their ads anyways. An ad platform is not going to leave money on the table from these advertisers just because they're "not relevant" to me.